That's because the startquest action does just that with no logic for chosing from a pool or anything. As I've already said, the quest list entries are used for quest pooling and vending. The start action just starts a quest.

So you want it to silently fail if the quest has already been done? Or is there an alternate action you'd like to take?

Would be good to understand what you're trying to achieve to put this request into context.

Precisely this; for there to be some way that a quest can only happen once per character, ever. This sounds more like it's on the quest engine side then, doesn't it?

For a more full context, this is the discussion we had on Discord:

ACNAero
vanilla Daggerfall has missions where the outcome is picked at random from a few options, right? what if some of these seemingly innocuous quests ended up as such?

Jehuty
Yeah, that's the idea. These things won't happen every time (some of them will be limited to once per character), since I want the player to be surprised each time. It could be like a 66% chance of a normal quest and 33% chance of some really unique hook following it up.

ACNAero
(possibly complicated to implement one) The target had serious dirt on the man who gave you the quest, and you were sent to silence the blackmail so said dirt wouldn't come out. you find the proof in a book on his/her person and have to decide what to do from there

ACNAero
if you just want some of these to be once per playthrough, then 1H and 1I might have to be mutually exclusive and make it so the other can't happen if one does. depends if you want to code all that
the lazy in me is saying "i'll pick one and have only that, " but i am very lazy :p

Jehuty
Nah, the more extreme the twist, the less likely I'll have it repeat. Like daedra possession would only ever happen once, but blackmail has got to be fairly common. I'm thinking of branching the probabilities like this:
1. Normal outcome (66%) 2. Surprise twist (33%)
2a. 25% Blackmail 2b. 25% slain by Daedroth which then pursues you 2c. 15% Ancient Vampire 2d. 10% Possessed by daedra (1x only). Theoretical percentages of course just as examples, not using everything we've said here.
So you'd have to play the quest a few times to even see a twist, but to see all of them would take a long time. Some players would write on the forums about things no one has ever discovered before, etc. I want a game to exist with things people haven't ever discovered before.

ACNAero
true. however, repeating the blackmail one repeatedly might be contingent on if you don't turn the proof of corruption in to the local law or something and agree to keep quiet for him. or that it can't happen more than once per giver. or anything like that
or only once per region
or i don't know. but having it happen frequently might devalue it is all i'm saying. feels like something that shouldn't be frequent/too repeatable
or maybe an alternate path for the blackmail is that an outlaw is threatening to frame the quest giver, and he's sending you to shut them up for good. at least then there's no way for the corruption to seem cartoonishly frequent

Jehuty
That's a good point. I might have to deflect the blackmail onto the local monarchy then. I can only make whole quests one-time-only.
Actually, I just thought of one possibility. I could duplicate the quest into a blackmail version that only ever gets offered once. The difference would be indistinguishable and could still use the questgiver as an asset

So the workaround I had thought of was to make a duplicate quest that would only be offered once, making use of the quest list. But there are other ones that wouldn't be offered via any questgiver, that would start through a quest action, that I still want to only happen once (IE: two weeks later, you get a report that the foe you slew was possessed by a daedra, and that daedra is now attacking a settlement, and it's your fault). That's the crux of my question here.

I would use "pick one of." However, I'm not concerned about the same option being picked multiple consecutive times, but multiple times at all. One of the options would have to be possible once and then completely blocked out in the future after it's chosen.

I've already thought of a workaround system for this, where I start with a quest that can only be offered once and then use a "start quest ######" while inside it. I'll accomplish both of my objectives this way, if it lacks a bit of flexibility.

I fail to see the bug there Jay. You put an entry into the quest list so the quest can be given out. Okay so you used P for prospect but that is irrelevant for commoner quests since commoners are not a guild that you can be a member of in the first place. If JHIMA00 should only start from JHIM010 then it should not be in the quest list at all.

As I've already said, the quest list entries are used for quest pooling and vending.

For some reason this message is not coming over clearly is it?

Do you have an init quest in this directory? Where is this quest list in your repo, may be easier for me to take a look there, but currently quests will only be startable if they're in the same directory as any that are configured as InitAtGameStart. That met your needs back then, but possibly not now. Maybe this is why you're adding quests to the lists that are not intended to be given out by NPCs?

My confusion came from earlier editions of the quest list requiring you to include any chained quests (ones that start as a consequence of an ordinary one) as a "P" quest. I didn't test whether it was possible to chain a quest without including it in the quest list. If it isn't necessary, then I'll remove it from the quest list.